Social Media

Viacom Details Secret Google Conversations About YouTube

As it continues to make its case against Google and YouTube in a $1 billion copyright lawsuit, Viacom has released previously sealed documents that the media company says show, “Google made a deliberate, calculated business decision … to profit from copyright infringement … [and] coerce rights owners like Viacom into licensing their content on Google's terms.”

The seemingly most convincing evidence –- as with the last set of documents released –- stems from internal correspondence between YouTube and Google employees. This time around, Viacom highlights statements like, “YouTube's content is all free, and much of it is highly sought after pirated clips” and, “YouTube's business model is completely sustained by pirated content,” that were made by Google executives as the company evaluated acquiring the then-completely profitless video site.

[Updated 2:50PM PT] However, YouTube reiterated its position to Mashable in an email this afternoon, writing that "media companies — including Viacom — were uploading their own content to YouTube, [so] there is no way YouTube could ever have known which content was and was not authorized to be on the site. It's revealing that Viacom is trying to litigate this case in the press. These documents aren't new. They are taken out of context and have nothing to do with this lawsuit."

In the documents revealed last month, YouTube’s founding team is shown at times in their own internal communications to care very little about dealing with the copyright content that ran rampant on the site in its early days, and instead focusing on a big pay day (which we all know it ultimately got from Google).

Meanwhile, Google maintains that it is and was protected by DMCA, and has published its own evidence that paints Viacom as hypocritical (as they assert in the statement above), since the company deliberately uploaded some of the very content it claimed was infringing on copyrights.

For the moment, the back-and-forth PR war seems to mostly be doing an effective job of painting both companies in not the kindest of lights. Nonetheless, regardless of how the lawsuit turns out, YouTube is not going to be shut down (Google has already shown it's willing to spend billions before seeing a return). At the same time though, it will be an interesting test for just how far DMCA extends, which could have big implications for the thousands of other sites that encourage user-generated content. Stay tuned.

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is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 42 million unique visitors worldwide and 21 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.